A Matter of Race

Intimate 36            Beacon 119

     Falcon 25            Nueva Pandora 9

Mixed racial themes during the Mid-20th Century were especially controversial. Publishers, however, often believed that controversy was not necessarily a bad thing when it might translate into higher book sales.

As I've mentioned before, it was common practice during the vintage period to take the cover art from one book and reuse it on another. This was especially true at Universal Publishing (see the TWINS section). What is odd in this case is that artwork showing a racially segregated couple on the cover of one book would be changed to reflect a "controversial" mixed-race couple on another.

Collector Mick Cocksedge sent the double-scan showing a slightly different variation on that theme. Pandora was a paperback label of Malinca, a publisher in Argentina. They obviously hired an artist to reproduce the cover of Falcon 25, Cancelled Redhead, by Hamlin Daly. In this case, however, it is the same novel that bears the copied cover. It was obviously decided that darker skin tone for the hardboiled private investigator was more appropriate in Latin America.